At the LIFE Stržen project partners and cooperates meeting, the participants reviewed past project commitments and discussed further tasks in the current year of the project, which expires in August 2022. The Project Board was not convened for some time due to the epidemiological situation in 2020 and in the first half of 2021. The activities of the two missing years were also presented in detail in the presentation. Among other things, the participants talked about searching for the bittern bird which has been unsuccesful for three times. Unfortunatelly, we have failed to capture a specimen of the bird and equip it with a GPS device for the purposes of the first monitoring of the movement of this heron, in Slovenia nesting only on Lake Cerknica. However, during the renaturation of Stržen, a quiet zone was established for this bird.

 

Of course, most of the meeting was dedicated to the successful renaturation of Stržen meanders. The main watercourse of Lake Cerknica in Ključi and Beli breg area now has its original image with several meanders, as created by nature before any human intervention, when Stržen became shorter by almost 4 chilometres. Locals wanted more arable land instead of water in order to satiate even more hungry mouths. However, this wetland area did not prove suitable for farming. With the equalization, some private lands were also halved, making it difficult for the owners to access and they are now getting them back. All of our expert predictions turned out to be accurate, despite all the skeptics. Just ten days after the construction machinery finished their work and drove away, the site area began to turn green again. It repels new reeds and other lake plants everywhere. There are fish already swimming in the new bends of Stržen, and crustaceans have made their homes on the banks, which indicates increased self-purification of water.

 

 

We also presented the diversion of visitors (action C7) by following actions:  

• communication with the visitors and regular monitoring of the situation takes place on the lake 
• several joint actions were carried out with the Police and the Inter-municipal police
• all trainings for tourist guides have been carried out
• a total of 109 activities (themed weekends) were carried out in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

The novelty is that instead of the initially planned pontoons (which we will not be able to set up due to the specific geomorphology of the lake and the recent changes in legislation), we will arrange practical entry points on the lake in front of the Rešeto sinkholes.

This was followed by a brief overview of awareness-raising campaigns – actions of lot E. The results of action E1 are as follows:

• the LIFE Stržen internet site has been viewed by 34.632 users and has altogether been clicked for 72.966-times
• the smartphone app is still awaiting Google approval 
• So far, the following have been published on the project: 48 printed articles in Slivniške pogledi, 15 printed articles in Notranjsko-primorske novice and 35 articles online, 118 reports on Radio 94 and 46 appearances on national media and 1 appearance on TV Orion. 
• the blog has an average of 1,456 views per month (68,921 views in total).

Participants watched the fourth film on renaturation, starring Jurij Kunaver, son of Pavle Kunavr, who was a great fighter for the protection and preservation of the intermittent Lake Cerknica. The film was released in September 2021. Irena Likar also explained that the first film has been released in January 2019, the second in December 2019 and the third in November 2020.